Simon Bradbury, head of Stronghold and Dungeon Hero developer Firefly, believes that out-sourcing 3D engines is the way forward.

"If you want someting that can throw polys, that can cull objects, that can apply multi-shaders... Why? Why would you want to d that yourself when somone can do it for you and allow you to focus on gameplay."

"In the old days when I was coding in 2D it was fine. Nothing more was expected of me than a tile, you could deal with graphics yourself in a month probably. So back then you had to naturally focus on the game because there wasn't much else to do, but now it just becomes this monster, so if you ever have a hope of wanting to do a game, you've got to give that to someone else," he said in an interview with Strategy Informer.